- a young elephant witnesses the death of his mother and runs away
- eventually returning to the forest, there are some surprising turns of events (spoilers below)
- convo: a man shoots and kills the mama elephant*, wine depicted in one image, an elephant dies from eating a bad mushroom**
Type: picture book
Ages: 5-8
Author: Jean de Brunhoff
* This occurs very early in the story. It’s brief but a bit heavy since readers have newly fallen in love with the fun baby elephant in the first two pages.
** Readers do not know this elephant until the moment of his death is told, so there is no emotional attachment. However, he is depicted as shriveled up and green after the mushroom poisoning.
Well, I did it. I finally read a Babar book. Do the subsequent books get better than this one? I’m not keen to spend time finding out.
I had no problem with the existence of the gun as some do, and the storyline was quite mild overall, but the book was so random and disjointed. Surely we lost a little in the French-to-English translation, but that certainly can’t account for all of the oddities.
First, the young elephant witnesses his mother killed by a hunter. Then he immediately runs away to the big city and buys fancy clothes and enjoys fancy food with his new fancy [human] lady friend who gives him anything he wants. When his cousins show up in town, he drives them back to the forest, suddenly severing the relationship with the lady without resolution. (Do they connect again in the next book?)
When they arrive in the forest, he surprisingly announces he and his even-younger elephant cousin got engaged during the car ride. They are then named king and queen since the latest king had just died of mushroom poisoning.
A big wedding and post-wedding dancing occur, and the book ends with bride and groom flying away in a hot air balloon. Not really sure what else to say!